Best Reads from Lately
Ten things I read (from . . . 500?) from lately that I think worth sharing. Doesn’t mean they’re good or even tolerable. But, chances are I saw something to them.
paleo
Best of February 2026
Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue [image or embed] — Omg. WTF
Best Reads from Lately
The world’s oldest rock art discovered in Indonesia | National Geographic Hundreds of clergy descend on Minneapolis and go on lookout for ICE Welcome to the Camping Games (now please show up) | Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine | University of Colorado Boulder Ancient DNA Reveals Twisted Roots of Syphilis Go Back 5,500 Years :
Best Reads from Lately
(and . . . all these I been saving up, too) https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/nov/30/fran-lebowitz-interview-love-novels-hiking-leaf-blowers-labubu Oregon pilot program giving cash to homeless youths sees staggering reduction in homelessness | Street Roots https://www.newscientist.com/article/2506650-asteroid-bennu-carries-all-the-ingredients-for-life-as-we-know-it https://www.sciencealert.com/curiosity-cracked-open-a-rock-on-mars-and-revealed-a-big-surprise Chernobyl Fungus Appears to Have Evolved an Incredible Ability : ScienceAlert Huge undersea wall dating from 5000 BC found in France This Weirdly Smart, Creeping
Best Reads from Lately
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/11/17/wolf-tool-use-animals https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/12/business/last-penny-minted https://www.wired.com/story/a-disease-carrying-mosquito-has-landed-in-the-rocky-mountains-where-it-historically-couldnt-survive https://www.wired.com/story/can-a-hydroelectric-dam-really-make-the-days-longer Neanderthals and early humans ‘likely to have kissed’, say scientists | Neanderthals | The Guardian https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattcraig/2025/11/19/how-mark-wahlberg-became-the-king-of-streaming https://www.extremetech.com/science/scientists-successfully-extract-40000-year-old-rna-from-woolly-mammoth Superman edition found in mum’s attic is most valuable comic ever at $9.12m ”Star Trek: The Next Generation” readies for last episode https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/graphics/see-how-egyptians-built-giza-pyramids They’re doing to America what they did to Christianity | Christianity
Best Reads from Lately
https://matthewjacksonwrites.com/tag/tracing-the-shape The Story Behind the Photo of Anne Murray and the Hollywood Vampires Journalists exit Pentagon rather than agree to new reporting rules | AP News Leonardo DiCaprio on ‘One Battle After Another,’ Hollywood, and Playing an Atypical Hero in Conversation With Paul Thomas Anderson https://theconversation.com/and-then-there-were-none-australias-only-shrew-declared-extinct-265988 Woman arrested at Alabama ‘No Kings’ rally after refusing
Best Reads from Lately
https://www.wired.com/story/anthropic-settlement-books-copyright https://www.today.com/health/men-s-health/tooth-in-eye-surgery-restores-vision-rcna230395 ‘It’s resurrection’: 1,000-year-old seeds could grow ancient plants in England’s ice-age ghost ponds | Wildlife | The Guardian https://slate.com/culture/2025/09/me-and-bobby-mcgee-janis-joplin-kris-kristofferson-lyrics.html Victor LaValle On Mental Illness, Monsters, Survival : NPR https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/health/hiv-treatment-shots-lenacapavir.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare Aggressive squirrel attacks send San Francisco Bay Area residents to ER | AP News Poking around the excellent cauldron of new horror lit Scientists
Best Reads from Lately
https://www.opb.org/article/2025/08/22/doerner-fir-tree-on-fire-saved https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/opinion/culture/ai-chatgpt-college-cheating-medieval.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/authors-celebrate-historic-settlement-coming-soon-in-anthropic-class-action Wildlife photographer of the year 2025 – in pictures | Environment | The Guardian Neil Young quits Facebook and Instagram over Meta’s use of chatbots with children | CBC Music An incredible Denisovan skull is upending the story of human evolution | New Scientist Horror ‘It Girl’ Gretchen Felker Martin on DC
Best Reads from Lately
Stacked em too high last time. So, pulling the trigger early, this Saturday: Harvard hired a researcher to uncover its ties to slavery. He says the results cost him his job: ‘We found too many slaves’ | Harvard University | The Guardian We can’t keep making videogame stories for players who aren’t paying attention to
Best Reads from Lately
would ask how these build up so fast. but, it’s probably from me, you know, reading a lot of stuff? https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/grammar-tips-from-a-thirty-eight-year-old-with-an-english-degree What a gene tweak in mice says about how we’re different from Neanderthals – The Washington Post Stone tool discovery offers new clue in mystery of ancient humans living on Indonesian island | CNN
Best Reads from Lately
All right, got all carried away with this one. Well: forgot to post, once they’d built up. And they just kept building . . . https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-dna-reveals-mysterious-new-group-of-humans-in-colombia-with-no-genetic-ties-to-people-today-180986819 Supreme Court just saved kids from reading about Trump | Opinion Infamous During The Civil War, This Seriously Old-School Survival Food Has Been Around Longer Than You Think America’s
Best Reads from Lately
These are coming fast than usual, but that’s because I’ve been (thanks to the NBA finals) cleaning up my tabs, reading all the stuff I told myself I was saving to read someday. Welp: “someday” finally came . . . The Digital Dilemma: Why Writers Are Abandoning Modern Word Processing Software – Typebar Magazine Sex
Best Reads from Lately
(just nine this time, because I KEEP going over . . . ) FRIDGE Slang Meaning | Merriam-Webster My Group Chat Is 250 People Sending Nudes Two tribes file groundbreaking lawsuit to force US to account for boarding school funds – ICT News https://www.smithsonianmag.com/articles/carnivorous-plants-have-been-trapping-animals-for-millions-of-years-so-why-have-they-never-grown-larger-180986708 Whatever happened to Billy Bibbit? The extraordinary life of actor Brad
Best Reads from Lately
Ryan Coogler says inspiration for the film felt ‘like a bolt of lightning’ : NPR Two Individuals Achieve First-Ever Communication Through Lucid Dreams While Sleeping At Separate Locations https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/woodpecker-damages-vehicles-massachusetts-town-rcna202755 Don’t fear the fungi | Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine | University of Colorado Boulder EVERYONE I HAVE EVER KISSED THINKS ABOUT ME ALL OF THE
Best Reads from Lately
I think I maybe stopped at “10” for once, like I always mean to? https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/game-of-thrones-dire-wolves-return-extinction-1236181901 Rowling Runs Her Mouth About Queer People, Again — Assigned https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2025/04/12/air-pollution-paris-health-cars https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/science/octopus-riding-shark-new-zealand.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=g&pvid=239D375E-70AD-4ADF-BEDF-06E028F28A2A ‘The Breakfast Club’ Stars Reunite for First Time in 40 Years Grave Expectations: FFC Interviews David Cronenberg – FILM FREAK CENTRAL https://wip.gatspress.com/issue/the-prehistoric-psychopath ‘We belong everywhere’: Lily Gladstone in
Best Reads from Lately
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/24/science/china-fossils-ancient-humans-homo-juluensis-denisovans DVD is dead. Long live DVD. Romero Was Right https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/books/indie-bookshop-e-books.html Newly discovered fungal species makes zombies of cave spiders on island of Ireland Op-ed: It’s okay to be angry at anyone who voted for Trump https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/notes-on-sweet-child-o-mine-as-delivered-to-axl-rose-by-his-editor https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/09/obituaries/tom-robins-dead.html https://creativetime.org/programs/archive/1990/TheBlackSheep/BlackSheep.htm
Best Reads from Lately
finally remembered to post this when the hands struck “10!” Mark Zuckerberg Defends Decision To Fly Confederate Flag At Facebook Headquarters – The Onion https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/10/science/antarctica-deep-ice-core/index.html Limerick granted ownership of her works – Longmont Times Call https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/11/03/tina-fey-profile-anchor-woman https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/17/science/giant-sea-bug-darth-vader-vietnam/index.html https://screenrant.com/the-monkey-2025-movie-osgood-perkins-stephen-king-story-change-reaction https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/01/18/oldest-gun-in-us-arizona/77802506007 https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/01/how-sleeping-pills-interfere-with-the-brains-internal-cleaning-mechanism https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/books/clay-mcleod-chapman.html
Best Reads from Lately
Okay, maybe “12” is a better round number for these? I seem to be not-great at remembering “10.” Surprisingly thick ice on Jupiter’s moon Europa complicates hunt for life | Science | AAAS https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/16/science/mirror-bacteria-research-risks/index.html Archaeo-Histories: “A 2300 year-old Horse Headdres…” – ohai.social https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/media/blake-lively-justin-baldoni-it-ends-with-us.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/23/europe/baby-mammoth-russian-crater-preserved-intl-latam World’s Deadliest Rat Can Kill An Elephant With 1 Bite How
Best of 2024
Craziest fullest year. Think I had eight weekends in a row where I was doing an event in a different city—well, I say “eight,” but . . . I actually ended up having to cancel the eighth, Miami. Was bummed, as the Rock Bottom Remainders were performing. But, knee was all sloshy with cortisone from,